


Not By The Book

by Sangrylah



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Romance, Schoolfic - sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-07
Updated: 2012-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 16:13:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sangrylah/pseuds/Sangrylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A different take of Sam and Mikaela’s relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not By The Book

Things don’t go back to normalcy immediately, but eventually they do. Thus Sam and Mikaëla go back to school.  
Except nothing is like it used to be.  
Because now, they are aliens too.  
They had learned the biggest secret of all times, then they had fought in a war, and they had survived and came back to say the tale, except nobody could hear it.  
They aren’t college students anymore. They are so much more, but nobody sees it.  
This school, with these students, is as far from them than monkeys from humans: so close, but so, so far apart.  
But they make it work.  
They sit in class, listening to their teachers dead set on teaching them trigonometry and history and literature and all these things that seem so useless now, but that they will study with dedication anyway, because Autobots have no use of people who can’t present well, of people who can’t look pretty (for the humans) _and_ be smart (for the ‘bots) _and_ be strong (for the war).  
It takes work and time, but it does work and eventually they find a balance.  
They go to school and listen hard because it’s not important but it _matters_. They talk to the kids trying to find what they have to say interesting, and to genuinely laugh with them. Then they go back to Bumblebee, patiently waiting for them, watching out for them, and talk about war and friends (Annabelle just said her first word, something like ‘rawhide’, and Sarah doesn’t know if she’s pissed off or amused that the first word of her daughter is the name of a giant sentient war robot).  
   
It’s complicated by the mere fact that they are Mikaëla Banes, pretty girl for sale of the school, and Samuel Archibald Witwicky, nutcase and loser of the school.  
They’re not supposed to be together - actually, they’re not even supposed to know each other’s _name_. But they do.  
The first day, silence falls when Mikaëla stops by Sam’s locker before they go to class. They don’t kiss or anything but they’re talking, and it rocks the students’ world. By lunch, everybody whispers while Sam, Miles and Mikaëla eat at the losers’ (Sam’s and Miles’) table.  
Everybody wonders at their easy companionship and feeling of closeness and _Iknowyou_ they emit.  
Except it, actually, is not easy.  
Because except the same school and the same alien friends, and the same alien war, what do they have in common?  
Yeah: nothing.  
Mikaëla is a hot girl with an unhealthy attraction to brawn-over-brains type of guys whose father is playing violin for years and whose mother is dead. She likes to tinker in motors in her free time and to dress to feel pretty.  
Sam is your average angsty loser teenager with overwhelming and überprotective parents and desires of fame and renown - the first step being to win the pretty girl, reason why he needs a car, because everybody knows chicks are so hot for cars, they can start forest fire _breathing_.  
They are not in the same circles, and frankly, they are not really compatibles.  
But they discovered a whole new specie together, they fought a war together, and they can’t admit that this is the only thing they have, because it’s too much to ignore and not enough to exist by itself.  
What they went through together, it’s strong and unforgettable whether they want it or not - and they don’t want to, because in this end it was _beautiful_. It bonds people together, makes it so there is this special kind of utter trust between you and the people you lived it with. It's unique and precious and so very magnificient.  
None of them - Jazz (I’m so sorry, brother), Will, Sam, Optimus or Mikaëla - can undo what they saw and felt and lived even if they wanted to (which they totally _don’t_ ), but human politics being what it is, Sam and Mikaëla are back to Providence, alone. They are the only people they can talk about the Autobots and the war with. The only ones who understand what it was, what it means, and what it is to came back to _school_ after all of this.  
Barring anything else, they don’t want to lose that. They can’t (because then, how to be sure they lived it? How to be sure they’re not crazy?). They _won’t_ let it get lost.  
So, like for their return to ‘real life’, as their families say, they work for it. They have to, for it - _them_ \- to work.  
Sam has to see beyond the curvy chest and the tanned stomach. He has to see that, yes, Mikaëla is beautiful, and she can be hot and cute, but she’s also smart, fierce, strong, witty, funny.  
Mikaëla has to see beyond the reputation of loser and the dead-fish eyes rived to her chest. She has to see that, yes, Sam has too many quirks, but he is also clever, fierce, strong, witty, funny.  
Then they see the rest.  
Sam is an imaginative guy and an attentive boyfriend, he tries his best but his fear to do something wrong that would anger or hurt her makes him uncertain and shy - but it’s cute, it makes her feel precious and cared for, which is new, good-new.  
Mikaëla is a good friend and a better girlfriend. She listens and she hears, but she never makes him feel dumb. She gives good advices and smiles to him like he did, for once, something remarkable. She doesn’t ask him to stop seeing Miles, and she’s even gracious with him.  
Inside, he’s a boy who never really fits in school or in his family and who tried to find _something_ in his ancestry that would make him belong and feel proud but was mocked about it instead. He’s awkward and feels better around giant robots than around human beings.  
Inside, she’s a little girl who wants her daddy, and who has to be strong, because she’s got no parent to take care of her and kids [Simmons] mock her because his dad is [in jail] absent. She dresses sexy to be seen and wanted, and wears make up to feel safe and hidden.  
  


It’s not like in the books, when the girl and the boy fall in love in a glance and are immediately happy and perfect together. They are not perfect, because they’re not supposed to be in the first place, and maybe, maybe they’re not meant to be. But who cares?  
Cars morphing into giant war robots aren’t supposed to be either, and brothers are not meant to fight in two opposite sides of a war either, so fuck it!, they want it to work, and it will. It _does_.  
So okay, it wasn’t easy and they had to work for it, to hurt and to get hurt to find their equilibrium, but it’s exactly why it’s so much more precious than ‘easy’ - because they _worked for it_. They put time, patience and efforts in it, teaching each other how to be good together, how to be good to each other because they _wanted_ it, and they. Never. Renounced.  
And it’s **_brilliant_**.

**Author's Note:**

> I read countless fics that read that Sam and Mikaëla are incredibly happy together right from the start, that they found their true other halves in each other, or at the contrary, that read that they didn’t work and end up breaking up badly, or very well, staying best friends for Sam to start seeing Bumblebee and Mikaëla Optimus/Ratchet/Hide whoever you chose.  
> I honestly don’t think it’s possible.  
> They lived something life-altering, even if they romantically don’t work I really don’t think they can fall apart like that. But I don’t think that they’re meant to be either. They’re at once too different and too similar to work. But, because they’re so similar, they wouldn’t stop until it works.  
> So there, this is my take on their relationship. Please review! I’d love to discuss it with you!


End file.
